originally posted: June 28, 2002 | by chelsie

The cheese-rennings or bedstraws (Galium spp. Linnaeus) are small scrambling herbs in the madder family (Rubiaceae). Cheese-renning was used to curdle milk for cheeses and junkets (desserts of sweetened flavored milk). The generic name, Galium, comes from the Greek word, gala, meaning milk. There are an estimated 300 species world-wide. Today, they are frequently considered nursery and landscape weeds. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 21, 2002 | by chelsie

Linnaeus named tarragon, Artemisia dracunculus, the species epithet meaning "little dragon". John Gerard (The Herbal, 1633) referred to the plant as Draco herba, the dragon herb and Dracunculus hortensis, the little dragon of the garden. Gerard offers no uses for tarragon other than as a salad herb with a warning, "... not to be eaten alone in sallades, but joined with other herbes, as Lettuce, Purslain, and such like, that it may also temper the coldness of them...." [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 14, 2002 | by chelsie

The Chilean wine palm (Jubaea chilensis (Mol.) Baillon) is native to the dry coastal valleys of the Andes. Discovered by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, the original name, Jubaea spectabilis, was published by Humboldt and Carl Sigismund Kunth in 1816. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 7, 2002 | by chelsie

No one ever named a plant for him. His name is not listed among the celebrated botanical authorities. He was forgotten and remembered only by chance in the 1980s. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 31, 2002 | by chelsie

The Phoenicians were responsible for the introduction of the pomegranate (Punica granatum Linnaeus) throughout much of the Mediterranean. The generic name, Punica, is the ancient Roman name for the city of Carthage. The species epithet, granatum, refers to the many seeds or 'grains' found within the leathery skin. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 24, 2002 | by chelsie

John Gerard's (The Herbal, 1633 ed.) Clove Gillofloures and wilde Gillofloures refer to the plants we now call carnations and pinks (Dianthus caryophyllus and other species). But in 1597, when Gerard's Herbal was first printed, the origin of clove gilloflowers was a mystery. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 17, 2002 | by chelsie

The dayflower (Commelina communis Linnaeus) [com me li' na com mun' is] is a small forb from Asia. The flowers are generally blue and irregular; two petals are showy, the third is pale, small, and seldom noticed. Each flower lasts only one day. The plant has become naturalized over much of the temperate zones. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 10, 2002 | by chelsie

There is a small flower, baby-blue-eyes (Nemophila menziesii Hooker & Arnott), [ne moff' i la men zee' se i] found in the shaded washes, chaparral, and wooded slopes of California. It is an ephemeral, a short-lived plant that grows, blooms, and sets seed in a brief wet season. The seeds wait out the year until the rains return. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 3, 2002 | by chelsie

Alexander von Humboldt was a geologist. In 1796, when he was 27 his mother died leaving him the family fortune. He promptly quit his position as a mine inspector and sought a companion to explore the world. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 26, 2002 | by chelsie

Hyacinthus was the youngest son of the King of Sparta and Diomede. He was an athletic youth admired and loved by the Greek gods. Apollo, the sun god, and Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, often came to participate in sports and games with the boy. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 19, 2002 | by chelsie

IIn 1493, Columbus and his crew were introduced to the 'anana' by the fierce Carib who had spread its cultivation up the islands of the West Indies. The Carib had learned of this plant from the Guarani, tribes living in the Amazon basin. Anana was its Guarani name. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 12, 2002 | by chelsie

In Gerard's second book of The Herbal, a page is titled, Chap. 103. Of Captaine Andreas Dorias his Wound-woort. He describes the plant, "This plant hath long and large thick and fat leaves, sharp pointed, of a blewish green like unto Woad, which being broken with the hands hath a prettie spicie smell. Among these leaves riseth up a stalk of the height of a tal man, divided at the top into many other branches, where upon grow small yellowish flowers, which turneth into down that flieth away with the wind." [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 5, 2002 | by chelsie

The Cupid's-dart (Catananche caerulea Linnaeus) [kat a nan' ke say ru' lee a] is native to the Mediterranean; a plant of the waste lands and mountains in southern Europe and northern Africa. [Click here to read more...]